“W.H. Ridgeway, the 16-year-old driver of the white bus, sobbed in his hospital bed and told his mother over and over how sorry he was the wreck had happened”
The Columbia State, South Carolina’s largest newspaper, reported this pitiful scene on January 21st, 1953, under the front-page headline, “Clarendon School Bus Crash Kills 2”. The State ran no pictures of the crash, but the details...

The certificate kept by the Clarendon Memorial Hospital records the death of Willie Lemon, an 18-year-old bus driver involved in a head-on collision on the highway near Jordan, South Carolina, on January 20, 1953. Vital information is recorded on Lemon. He was occupied as a school bus driver. He is listed as an unmarried, colored male from Manning, South Carolina, with no social security number.
His...